My son’s seventh grade social studies class was recently learning about the Little Rock Nine, the nine Black students who enrolled at an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 and were met by a hostile white mob and the Arkansas National Guard blocking their entrance.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower eventually sent federal troops to escort them, but not before the teenagers endured taunting, threats, removal by police and the eyes of a watchful, nervous nation as the media recorded their attempts to access an education.
Part of my son’s homework assignment was to answer what might have happened if some of the white students at Central High School had stood or walked in solidarity with their new Black classmates. Would upstanders have changed that particular moment in history?
